Gypsum is one of the most widely used minerals in the world with millions of pounds of gypsum consumed annually. A large percentage of the gypsum in the United States is used for making wallboard for homes, offices, and commercial buildings. Wallboard or plasterboard is a thin coat of plaster between two sheets of cardboard. The plaster is made from natural gypsum mined from quarries or from synthetic gypsum produced from scrubbing smokestacks in electrical power plants or from other industrial waste streams.
Many tools are used in conjunction with drywalling and spackling. Some of these include: taping heads, pumps, roller handles, glazing head handles, and bridger handles. After these tools are used, they need to be cleaned and stored for easy transport to other job sites. A thorough cleaning of these tools is imperative as they are often used in hostile environments such as the replacement of mildewed or mold-infested plasterboard.
Currently, no container is specifically made for transporting, cleaning and storing drywall tools. Buckets filled with water are often used to clean tools, however, this can lead to spills when the buckets are not covered. Buckets of water left uncovered can also easily freeze during winter months. Moreover, simply placing dirty tools into buckets of water does not adequately clean tools because water can easily spill out of the buckets before thoroughly cleaning the tools.
Conventional toolboxes and containers are not large enough for drywalling and spackling tools and do not have the ability to be drained when a user pours water inside to clean the tools. As a result, many expensive tools can be damaged or destroyed because of the inability to adequately care for these tools.
Hence, there is a need in the art for an easy to use, affordable, safe and sealable container for the transportation, storage and cleaning of drywall tools.